NEW YORK - Ashley Judd says she spent 47 days in a Texas treatment facility for depression and other emotional problems, in an interview in Glamour magazine.
"I needed help," the 38-year-old actress tells the magazine in its August issue. "I was in so much pain."

Judd, the daughter of country music star Naomi Judd, says she entered the Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap in February for "codependence in my relationships; depression, blaming, raging, numbing, denying and minimizing my feelings."

"But because my addictions were behavioral, not chemical, I wouldn't have known to seek treatment. At Shades of Hope, my behaviors were treated like addictions. And those behaviors were killing me spiritually, the same as someone who is sitting on a corner with a bottle in a brown paper bag."

Judd says she was visiting her sister, singer Wynonna Judd, who was being treated for food addictions.

"When (the counselors) approached me about treatment, they said, 'No one ever does an intervention on people like you. You look too good; you're too smart and together. But you (and Wynonna) come from the same family - so you come from the same wound.' No one had ever validated my pain before. It was so profound," she says.

Judd says her childhood was a time of "complete and total chaos." She attended 13 schools in 12 years and lived alternately with her mother, grandmother and father.

As a result, Judd says, she became "a hypervigilant child," striving to be perfect.

"A wonderful pastor once told me, 'Perfectionism is the highest order of self-abuse,'" she tells the magazine. "So now I try to remind myself that if I engage in perfectionism, I am abusing myself. Period."

Judd says her relationships, including her marriage to race-car driver Dario Franchitti, have improved.

"It's so simple really: I was unhappy and now I'm happy," she says. "Now, even when I'm having a rough day, it's better than my best day before treatment."

Judd starred in 2002's Frida and 2004's De-Lovely. Her upcoming films include Bug, directed by William Friedkin and co-starring Harry Connick Jr.

I'm sure there will be some cracks on here about how someone like Ashley Judd could be depressed. I'm sure there will be some tough guys who look at someone dealing with this as someone who isn't mentally tough, or as yet another Hollywood drama queen.

But reading here quotes, and as somebody who has battled these same demons since childhood, I think she seems 100 percent sincere. This part, in particular, applies to what I've gone through:

"Perfectionism is the highest order of self-abuse,'" she tells the magazine. "So now I try to remind myself that if I engage in perfectionism, I am abusing myself. Period."

I don't know if it's technically a diagnosis, but in high school, a psychologist/counselor evaluated me and said that I have a serious problem with perfectionism. I fight it all the time. If I'm playing golf and I mishit, for example, if I lose a hand of poker on a bad play, I am at risk of entering a day-long period of self-loathing. I know that sounds irrational, but it happens. The other day, my brother told me that my parents told him, "We're surprised Pringle isn't at Sports Illustrated by now!" So, of course, I spent the rest of the evening with a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I was letting the family down, that I was an underachiever.

Not all depressives are suicidal. I think that's a misconception. I've never, ever, ever had any of those thoughts. What does happen, however, is that nothing I accomplish feels like enough. Or even if it does for a few minutes or days, it wears off quickly - until the next little "failure."

Obviously, upon self-examination, I realize that a lot of the time, the thoughts are irrational. But they are also compulsive. And you end up sitting there, wondering if you are just being pessimistic, or whether the thoughts this time around have real merit ("I am ugly. That's why I can't get a date.")

Anyway, I didn't want to hijack this thread into something about me. I'm trying to speak up for all people who go through this. Because Ashley Judd could win five Best Actress awards, and all that would happen, if she didn't corral it, is that she would find another reason to hate herself. Or she would feel, when she didn't win the sixth, that the previous five were flukes.